Jeb Bush blasts Obama on foreign policy

“In the span of a decade, will have withheld $1 trillion from national defense”, Bush said.

“He’s close to being dead and done, so this is his big moment”, said veteran GOP strategist Ed Rollins.

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush says the United States must commit US ground forces to the Middle East to fight the Islamic State.

The comments are the first time Bush has called explicitly for a ground war against ISIS – he’d previously focused on ramping up airstrikes against the terrorist group. Obama, and most Democrats, have been loathe to say “radical Islam”, when asked about who keeps attacking us in the West. Bush pounced on this linguistic difference: “Here is the truth you will not hear from our president”.

Complicating things for Bush is that despite his attempts to look like a commander in chief, he doesn’t actually have the résumé of one. USA troops are already conducting raids against the Islamic State in Iraq, including one where US forces worked with Kurdish fighters to free 70 hostages kidnapped by the Islamic State.

He said Republicans’ views regarding the refugees were “offensive” and “un-American”.

CORNISH: And today, Jeb Bush spoke to cadets at the Citadel – the military college in SC.

“He basically just seems to be saying ‘let’s just throw more money at everything in the defense budget.’ That I think reflects a lack of strategy”, he said. ISIS has since claimed responsibility for the attacks.

While Bush projected himself as a potential wartime commander in SC, he also appeared on Tuesday to be anticipating criticism that he would wage war in the Middle East, as his father and brother did when they were president.

The Pentagon, he argued, is bloated with waste, and he said he plans to reduce the number of Washington bureaucrats to free up resources for more uniformed military.

“Jeb Bush has been a strong advocate for the USA military, strong enough to earn my support, ” Navy Admiral Robert Natter (Ret.) writes in an op-ed for The Virginian-Pilot newspaper of Norfolk, Va. Thursday. A poll of New Hampshire Republicans released Wednesday by WBUR radio placed Bush in a tie for fifth, at 7 percent.

“Does [Jeb Bush] have gravitas?”

BUSH: Here’s the truth you will not hear from our president.

He also said he would restore the National Security Agency’s controversial program, begun by his brother’s administration after the September 11 attacks, to stockpile information about telephone calls made in the United States.

Other establishment candidates, such as Ohio Gov. John Kasich and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, are similarly seeking to showcase their national security or law enforcement bona fides.

He continued to make the case for why he is the best candidate to lead the country.

“The Washington Post added that current Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said, “‘my personal feelings are I’m going to wait till tomorrow”, he told reporters, referring to a briefing on how the process works scheduled for Wednesday. The attacks in Paris also have sparked debate among Republicans over the refugee crisis as thousands of people flee Syria, which has been engaged in nearly five years of civil war even as Islamic State has also taken hold there. “If you want to deal with the refugee problem properly, then we need to create a safe and secure Syria”.

But his belief that the refugees shouldn’t be rejected out of hand reminds a few of his “compassionate conservatism” on the issue of immigration, which has been a weakness.

“I think it’s important for the next president, whoever he or she may be, to learn from the lessons of the past and use those lessons to focus on the future”, Bush told an audience of more than 300 at Coastal Carolina University in Conway Tuesday. “It’s statements like that that could make it impossible for him to recover”.